The present invention relates generally to the field of call center bandwidth utilization, and more particularly to reducing voice call bandwidth consumed by calls placed on hold.
Customer representative call centers remain pervasive in offering a communication pathway for those seeking service to connect via voice call to support personnel call receivers that provide services. A common experience for callers is to receive an automated message acknowledging that support personnel are not available, and to be put on hold.
Call centers are staffed to maximize the productive time of the answering representatives, therefore, to minimize idle time, calls received by a call center typically outnumber the calls handled by representatives within the same period of time. The excess calls are put on-hold continuing to consume allocated bandwidth, and often the on-hold calls include recorded audio content delivered while the call is on-hold. The bandwidth used to support calls on-hold is unproductive.
There are different approaches to handling calls that are put on-hold. In some cases an automated message informs a caller that support personnel, answering representatives, or other contacts they are trying to reach, are not available and instruct the caller to call back at a later time. In other cases the message played informs the caller that they are important, however, they must wait and remain connected until an answering representative is available. Often the caller is connected to a channel that plays music, or a mixture of messages, advertisements and music, while the caller waits to be connected to one of the representatives.
On-hold calls continue to consume an amount of bandwidth of the telecommunications capacity of the entity to which the call was placed, while the on-hold call remains connected. Callers lack control of the content they must listen to while remaining on-hold or risk missing being connected to the support personnel or answering representative they intended to contact. Further, connection bandwidth is wasted in an unproductive delivery of music or other content while calls remain on-hold. For instances in which the number of calls on-hold is high, the unproductive bandwidth consumed can be significant.